Justice for Gauri – The Right Way, The Only Way

Gauri Lankesh was gunned down in Bengaluru on September 6, 2017, Wednesday. Since then, her killing has provoked outrage and anguish across the country, innumerable debates and discussions are being carried out in Television and Print media about the killing, rushing to abrupt conclusions with statements from various quarters of ‘Left’-leaning parties as well as from the Ministers of Congress government in Karnataka. In the social media too (Twitter, Facebook), lots of posts and messages have erupted with allegations and counter-allegations. It is all but natural that people raise their voice in consent or dissent in any Democracy.

However, the protests on the streets as well as in the media are turning out to be ugly, day by day.

While some shameless violent handles on social media are justifying Gauri’s death, some are hitting streets to express their anguish with violent protests. Whatever the shade or ideology or intent may be, murder is murder, period. However, there is no room for extremism in any form of protest. The government of the day, CONGRESS, is responsible to maintain Law and Order in the state and has to curtail this menace of agitation politics quickly, else this may go out of control and become a major problem affecting lacs of common citizens commuting to office and also daily wage workers earning their livehood.

Though the government has set-up a team to investigate this murder, the protest marches are increasing day by day. Today, thousands of people including journalists, writers and so called ‘rationalists’ have taken to the streets of Bengaluru to protest against the murder, a call given by ‘Forum against Gauri Lankesh’s assassination‘ to ‘register resistance to hate culture’.

Not surprising that most of these journalists are ideologically inclined towards Communist parties, who claim to call themselves as ‘rationalists’. That they are ‘progressive activists’, writers, thinkers, they are sporting black badges that read – “#IAmGauri”, these protesters took out a rally from the Sangolli Rayanna Railway Station to the Central College grounds, where a meeting was held.

In parallel, Twitter trend with hashtag #IAmGauri, has also been going on, purportedly arranged to gather sympathy towards their protest and seeking attention of the International media.

The activist participants included P.Sainath, Teesta Setalvad, Anand Patwardhan, Kavitha Krishnan, Prashanth Bhushan, Medha Patkar, Megha Pansare, et al. Here, the point to be noted is that these very people do not comment, let alone sympathize with the death of our soldiers or death of any other human life lost to Naxal killings or the brutal assault innocent RSS workers in Kerala.

Rather than demanding justice from the government over the series of murders in Karnataka and questioning the pattern in this regard, these urban naxals seem to be in cahoots with this Congress government as the evidence shows that those other similar cases like Kalburi’s death, were not even cracked by the investigating authorities for which the state government is accountable. Hence, it is amply clear that these people are milking the unfortunate death of Gauri Lankesh to suit their political agenda.

Instead of seeking justice, they are selectively attacking Central government for the same. Under immense pressure, the Government of Karnataka increased the number of officers in the SIT by 40 to speed up the investigation. The investigating officer in the case confirmed that no arrests have been made so far. A whole week has passed since Gauri Lankesh was shot dead at her residence, but there has been no breakthrough at all in the murder case.

And these protests are allowed to continue eternally to obtain political mileage.

Why the delay in investigation? Why fuelling the protests? How far and how long will they use this unfortunate killing?

Not just this one death. There were similar such incidents in the past under the ruling of the very same Congress government led by CM Siddaramaiah, till date no arrests were made and no conclusive evidence has come from the investigation. Clearly, this inefficient Congress government has failed to maintain law and order in the state and fueling unrest in the society.

While all this was going on, the Supreme Court ordered CBI probe into superintendent of Karnataka police M.K.Ganapathy’s alleged ‘suicide’ saying there were “startling facts” in the case which needed to be probed in a fair manner. Dy. SP. Ganapathy had died at Madikeri in Karnataka under mysterious circumstances on July 7 last year. It asked the CBI to file a status report on the probe before it within 3 months. As per the Press reports, the top court said it was neither determining the nature of the offence, nor the fact as to who are guilty. “But public confidence and societal requirement demand that the guilty persons must be reached,” the SC bench said while ordering the CBI probe into the matter. In this case of death of Dy. SP. Ganapathy, the Karnataka government had opposed the plea in the apex court saying that a thorough and in-depth probe had been conducted in the case. It was claimed in the appeal that before the death, the police officer had accused Bengaluru city development minister K J George and senior officers A M Prasad and Pranab Mohanty of harassing him. The bench considered the allegations and said under these circumstances, the probe should be carried out by an independent agency. Senior lawyer Kapil Sibal, representing the state government, opposed the plea and said the relevant materials could be submitted in the court to establish that the probe has been conducted fairly. Another senior advocate A M Singhvi, who represented George, argued that the police officer was suffering from depression and had undergone treatment. Senior lawyer Jayant Bhushan, appearing for the father of the deceased, said the state CID had probed the matter and filed the closure report without getting the forensic report.

That being the case, there is growing suspicion against the Karnataka government, regarding Gauri Lankesh’s death. As per CM Siddaramaiah’s own admission which was carried by the media reports, Gauri Lankesh met the CM a week before her death, which was accepted by the parties concerned. Hence, it is incumbent on the investigating team to grill the CM of Karnataka and bring the facts out in the public domain and also establish the truth about their meeting minutes. Hence, the buck stops solely at the CM’s office.

However, in the so called ‘progressive’ protest march “#IAmGauri”, why have the Congress Ministers from the state government been directly participating in these rallies? Are they politicizing this murder (or) are they protesting against the very same government they work for?

What is the back channel arrangement or conversation that coaxes them to conceal that Gauri Lankesh was under threat from Naxals? Going by Gauri Lakensh’s last tweets on the day of her unfortunate death, she has spoken about the infights among her own comrades asking them to unite for a bigger cause. This needs investigation.

If we observe the Twitter trends with the hash-tag #IAmGauri, those eminent ‘progressive’ protestors included even the Ministers from Karnataka government, who are openly supporting the Naxal bandwagon. One can understand the support of party cadre in support of the bereaved family, but why the government officials, why the Ministers, why the official funeral rites? Do they want to give platform for Naxal/Left supporters and make Karnataka as another Kerala? Are they milking this issue to garner support base and planning for a greater alliance in 2018?

Unlike the urban Naxal sympathizers baselessly blaming certain organisations, the right thinking public despite glaring evidences is not hastily concluding that Gauri’s death is a carefully orchestrated mystery that surrounds the political reality of elections due in Karnataka in a few months from now. Nor are they saying that the ruling dispensation in Karnataka has colluded with these journalist-activists, and that needs to be exposed as well. Seeking justice the right way is the only way in a democracy and not indulge in hooliganism and chest beating “rudaalis”. It is well known that Naxal Maoist movement is inherently violent, and one has to be careful while handling them.

Law and order is a state subject. What stops these so called ‘progressive rationalists’ from collectively demanding accountability from the state government? Why have the signature petitions not been started yet demanding Karnataka CM’s resignation? Instead, the protests are being held under the blessings of the very same state government under the leadership of CM Siddaramaiah. Hence, is the government using this incident to camouflage its failures of the last five years of its governance and rather take advantage of the sympathy being created to silence critics in the run upto state elections in 2018?

While the govt of Karnataka are suppressing the voice of dissent by the opposition parties in Mangaluru against the misrule of government and trying to silence the critics of India’s largest Nationalist Democratic Party, it appears that the government is supporting the unelected “Urban Naxals” implicitly.

Why is there a silence from those intellectuals who do not demand accountability from the CM of Karnataka if not his resignation, but yet never miss an opportunity to take on the central government and the PM for every issue in the country? Some of these eminents met under the banner of The Press Club Of India recently, for their alleged ‘attack on freedom of press’. What are they upto now? Are these street protests in the name of “#IAmGauri” only to gather support base for their non-stop agitation, disruptive politics?

the so called left liberals are holding the state to ransom using unfortunate deaths to suit their political agenda and create unrest in the country, examples like: as in the cases of Rohit Vemula’s death in the University of Hyderabad, JNU ‘Cultural evening’ calling for “Desh Ki Barbaadi”, hijacking universities and creating mayhem in the society.

They have failed miserably in all these attempts and will continue to fail, because their ideology and their intentions will not be accepted by Bharath. These incidents have proved that this nation will stay steadfast and will stay one against these Communist and Congress forces.

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